Zoey Punches the Future in the Dick (Zoey Ashe #2)

by David Wong

“Okay, so why would they choose to believe this particular awful thing?” “Because they hate you, Zoey. And because they hate you, they need to come up with a reason to hate you. See, because otherwise, they’re just bad people.” “What? That doesn’t even—why do they hate me in the first place?” “When you played ball, were you best buddies with all the other girls on the team? Did you all hang out together in the off-season?” “No.” “But when you were together on the court, when you won, you felt something. Maybe any other time you couldn’t carry on a conversation with any one of them without wanting to blow your brains out, but on the court, you suddenly had a bond. All of them differences fell away. That’s why we have sports, the game is just a pretext to let you go out there and feel that.” “So it’s just a game to them? Is that it?” “Well, that feeling, you get that in a war zone, too, only a hundred times stronger. So call it a game or a war or whatever, ultimately it’s just about that bond. So, yeah, the thing they hate isn’t even you, it’s a fictional version of you they’ve crafted to be as hateable as possible. The more they hate you, the more they love each other.”